“Well! well!” said Marat, with a slight tone of hesitation, “it is best, citizen Bibot, to be over-careful these times.”

Even whilst Marat spoke his face, usually so cunning and so vengeful, had suddenly lost its look of devilish cruelty which was almost superhuman in the excess of its infamy, and a greyish hue—­suggestive of terror—­had spread over the sunken cheeks.  He clutched Bibot’s arm, and leaning over the table he whispered in his ear: 

“The Public Prosecutor had scarce finished his speech to-day, judgment was being pronounced, the spectators were expectant and still, only the Montreux woman and some of the females and children were blubbering and moaning, when suddenly, it seemed from nowhere, a small piece of paper fluttered from out the assembly and alighted on the desk in front of the Public Prosecutor.  He took the paper up and glanced at its contents.  I saw that his cheeks had paled, and that his hand trembled as he handed the paper over to me.”

“And what did that paper contain, citizen Marat?” asked Bibot, also speaking in a whisper, for an access of superstitious terror was gripping him by the throat.

“Just the well-known accursed device, citizen, the small scarlet flower, drawn in red ink, and the few words:  ’To-night the innocent men and women now condemned by this infamous tribunal will be beyond your reach!’”

“And no sign of a messenger?”

“None.”

“And when did——­”

“Hush!” said Marat peremptorily, “no more of that now.  To your post, citizen, and remember—­all are suspect! let none escape!”

The two men had been sitting outside a small tavern, opposite the Porte Montmartre, with a bottle of wine between them, their elbows resting on the grimy top of a rough wooden table.  They had talked in whispers, for even the walls of the tumble-down cabaret might have had ears.

Opposite them the city wall—­broken here by the great gate of Montmartre—­loomed threateningly in the fast-gathering dusk of this winter’s afternoon.  Men in ragged red shirts, their unkempt heads crowned with Phrygian caps adorned with a tricolour cockade, lounged against the wall, or sat in groups on the top of piles of refuse that littered the street, with a rough deal plank between them and a greasy pack of cards in their grimy fingers.  Guns and bayonets were propped against the wall.  The gate itself had three means of egress; each of these was guarded by two men with fixed bayonets at their shoulders, but otherwise dressed like the others, in rags—­with bare legs that looked blue and numb in the cold—­the sans-culottes of revolutionary Paris.

Bibot rose from his seat, nodding to Marat, and joined his men.

From afar, but gradually drawing nearer, came the sound of a ribald song, with chorus accompaniment sung by throats obviously surfeited with liquor.

For a moment—­as the sound approached—­Bibot turned back once more to the Friend of the People.